A great novel is concerned primarily with the interior lives of its
characters as they respond to the inconvenient narratives that fate
imposes on them. Movie adaptations of these monumental fictions often
fail because they become mere exercises in interior decoration,
searches for the armoire or settee that can serve as the objective
correlative for a character's unspoken, perhaps dramatically
unspeakable, fears and fancies. One may therefore wish to approach
Swann in Love or The Bostonians undemandingly, almost as one would an
antique show, browsing and ruminative but not expecting to make
powerful...